I found an interesting 2009 report from the Episcopal Church in Delaware on that denomination and slavery. I was prompted to research by the discussion on another thread of whether Delaware was a Southern or a Northern state. I think that the answer is that it was both, at least for the Episcopalians.
The early Anglican church in Delaware was promoted by The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. According to the report:
The Society was early on confronted with the dichotomy of freedom in Christ and the enslavement of the African workforce. The Society reconciled the dichotomy by speaking of spiritual freedom while supporting chattel slavery. The 1710 acquisition by bequest of Codrington Plantation in Barbados cemented the Society’s support for slavery. Codrington Plantation was the largest sugar plantation in the West Indies, worked by approximately 275 enslaved men, women and children. Codrington had an unusually high turnover rate, even for the time and place, with a quarter of its workforce dying each year. This necessitated a constant program of importation to maintain profits. Discipline was draconian. Escape attempts were punishable by death while the murder of a slave by a European carried a more modest fine of £15 (approximately $200.00). Codrington was a principal source of funding for the Society, so much so that the Society opposed all attempts to limit slavery and continued to utilize slaves at the plantation until the 1833 abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
Similarly to the Catholic Jesuits of Georgetown, slaves were owned by clergy and churches:
Not only did the Society’s clergy in Delaware receive their stipends from the profits at Codrington but evidence exists of Society clergy and Society congregations in Delaware owning enslaved Africans. The Rev. Mr. Phillip Reading, Rector of St. Anne’s Middletown from 1746 until his death in 1778 bequeathed in his will a considerable estate. Amid the lists of household silver, furnishings and farm implements he left to his wife “three certain slaves named Patrick (the elder), Menib and Moll, for her sole use and as her entire property. And with regard to the remainder of such slaves as shall be possessed and owned by me at the time of my decease, I give and bequeath them unto my son Phillip Reading and my daughter Catherine Anne Reading, to be divided according to age, sex, and other qualities, equally betwixt them.” The division of families, husbands from wives and children from parents, was not one of the criterion for division of the assets. The Rev. Mr. William Becket, SPG missionary and rector of St. Peter’s Lewes, left nothing to his son-in-law and daughter in a 1743 will because of previous generosity including “goods and chattels by building him a house and giving him a negro”. He did leave his “negros Jenny and Oxford …to my two daughters”. A review of other probated wills from the period show widespread slave ownership among Church members. Most farm owners before 1785 in Sussex and Kent were C of E members and typically owned slaves. Records show that domestic slaves were common in the towns of New Castle County. An 18th century Vestry of Old Swedes, Wilmington provided an enslaved woman, Peggy, to care for the Rectory.
After 1800, the number of slaves declined rapidly in the state. At the same time, new laws were enacted to reduce the rights of free blacks, even as the state came to have the largest free black population in the United States by proportion. After the Civil War began, the report says:
The Episcopal Church’s response to these changes may be understood by the number of clergy who left Delaware in 1860 to fight for the slavery cause. Eight priests, more than half the total at the time, declared for the Confederacy. That said, Alfred Lee, our first Diocesan (1841 – 1887) was a staunch Union man.
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